As the fir­ings and threats of such con­tin­ue, the is­sue aris­es as to whether there should be cer­tain se­nior of­fi­cial po­si­tions in state in­sti­tu­tions which should be placed be­yond the reach of gov­ern­ments and politi­cians. Sure­ly, the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank and the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer should not be made in­to po­lit­i­cal bobolees by an in­com­ing gov­ern­ment.

At present, a cir­cus is go­ing around re­gard­ing whether Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO), Dr Roshan Paras­ram, has been re­quired to ex­it from the po­si­tion. The re­spons­es reek of po­lit­i­cal game-play­ing, with the rel­e­vant min­is­ter deny­ing knowl­edge of the claim, lead­ing to a mer­ry-go-round.

In the in­stance of what was a con­struc­tive dis­missal of then gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, Dr Eu­ric Bobb, a high­ly qual­i­fied and re­spect­ed econ­o­mist and cen­tral banker, he was al­so faced with some dif­fi­cul­ties at Pi­ar­co Air­port on his way out of the coun­try.

As in the case of the fired Jwala Ram­bar­ran and now Dr Alvin Hi­laire, be­cause their re­movals were dri­ven by po­lit­i­cal mo­tives, it is quite like­ly, as in the in­stance of Ram­baran, that Dr Hi­laire will be du­ly re­ward­ed with a large mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion pack­age. Maybe if the pay­ment were to come from the pock­ets of those who or­dered the fir­ings, they would not be so quick to en­gage in po­lit­i­cal par­ti­san­ship.

Even more im­por­tant than the mon­e­tary cost of the po­lit­i­cal fir­ings, such re­movals cheap­en the val­ue and sta­tus of the bank and its gov­er­nor. They al­so send the mes­sage that qual­i­fi­ca­tions, ex­pe­ri­ence and com­pe­tence in high of­fice rank way down the list com­pared, on the one hand, to po­lit­i­cal vin­dic­tive­ness, and on the oth­er, crony­ism.

What the po­lit­i­cal­ly based fir­ings al­so do is to set up the suc­ces­sors to of­fice to be con­sid­ered as less than pro­fes­sion­al, more like po­lit­i­cal hacks in the minds of many.

With­out seek­ing to make any un­to­ward com­ment on Mr Lar­ry Howai’s ca­reer and com­pe­tence, his main ex­pe­ri­ence has been as a com­mer­cial banker com­pared to the deep and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence of Dr Hi­laire as an econ­o­mist and cen­tral banker. The fact is that cen­tral bank­ing is very dif­fer­ent from the com­mer­cial bank­ing ca­reer of the new­ly ap­point­ed gov­er­nor.

Mr Howai’s in­ser­tion in­to the po­si­tion be­comes even more loaded with po­lit­i­cal mo­ti­va­tion when the os­ten­si­ble rea­son flagged for Dr Hi­laire’s re­moval was his re­fusal to name those who had re­ceived the bulk of forex dis­burse­ments. But on his ap­point­ment, Gov­er­nor Howai al­so made it clear he was not go­ing to name those firms which re­ceived for­eign ex­change. So, what then was the rea­son for fir­ing the high­ly qual­i­fied and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ex­pe­ri­enced Dr Hi­laire?

In the in­stance of Dr Paras­ram, the work he and his staff did dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was praised lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. He op­er­at­ed in full view of the pub­lic and re­ceived com­men­da­tion for sav­ing lives and for con­tain­ing the virus, for which he re­ceived the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of T&T - the coun­try's high­est award. Is he now be­ing re­moved be­cause his pro­fes­sion­al treat­ment plan dif­fered from that pro­posed by a lawyer-politi­cian as the then leader of the Op­po­si­tion with no known ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise in health­care?

The fir­ings of non-po­lit­i­cal pro­fes­sion­als are ad­di­tion­al sol­id rea­sons for con­sti­tu­tion­al change to en­sure the so­ci­ety has the most qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als in crit­i­cal po­si­tions in the State of Trinidad and To­ba­go.